Notes [[for 1845-1849]]

[column 1:]

May 1845 - 1 Title: William Smith, ed. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities Third American Edition, ed. by Charles Anthon. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845. SLM: p. 326. This notice
incorporates Poe’s review of the same work in the April 12, 1845 Broadway Journal (text in Pollin 3: 81). The factual
material is drawn directly from the text of the book. As usual, Poe paid his regards to Professor Anthon. Portions of his notices
appeared in the articles on Anthon in “Autography” (Graham’s, November 1841) and “The Literati”
(Godey’s, June 1841).

a Charlottesville University] The University of Virginia. Poe was a student, probably of Latin, in Long’s class, in 1826
(see Poe Log, pp. 68, 73). Long was the target of one of the riotous student pranks, to which Poe successfully pleaded innocent
(see Silverman, p. 31).

b Potter and Adams] See Pollin 3: 61, note 81/8 which says that the sentence was adapted from Anthon’s preface. See
February 1836 - l, paragraph two of the introduction, for an account of the way in which Anthon “revised” similarly
the Classical Dictionary of Lempriere on which Poe based his “Palaestine” article.

May 1845 - 2 Title: Francis Fauvel-Gouraud. Phreno-Mnemotechny. New York
and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. SLM: 326-28. The review is a follow-up to Poe’s two notices in the Broadway
Journal of April 12 and April 19, 1845, in which he promised to say more of this work later (Pollin 3: 83, 101). The title,
referring to a system of memorymanagement, is explained in the text. Poe was fascinated, as his interest in phrenology attests, by
contemporary attempts to explain the workings of the mind. Unlike the earlier reviews, this one is padded out with long excerpts from
the text. Poe throughout refers to “M. Gouraud,” but the author’s name, correctly, was hyphenated. Hull (p. 191)
reasonably suggests that

Poe, pressed for time, simply expanded two of his recent Broadway Journal reviews (this and the one on Smith) in an
effort to fulfill his new arrangement with the SLM.

* vivâ /viva

* incontestibly / incontestably

a Grey and Feinagle] See Pollin 4: 77, note 101/55.

* Priestly / [Joseph] Priestley

September 1848 - 1 Title: Estelle Anna Robinson Lewis. The Child of the
Sea. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1848. SLM text: 14: 569-71. Lewis preferred “Estelle” or “Stella” to
her real but presumably less poetical given name, Sarah. The nearly thirty entries in the Poe Log and the note on her in Mabbott
1: 424-25 provide a succinct — but quite sufficient — record of Poe’s sorry relationship with this ambitious but
ungifted versifier. He met her and her attorney husband, Sylvanus D. Lewis, sometime in 1846. After the death of his wife Virginia in
January 1847, Poe received money and other favors to act as Lewis’s press agent. He carried out the commission with zeal and no
apparent misgivings, pressing favorable notices of her work on several editors. Poe even published a clever but sycophantic acrostic
sonnet called “The Enigma” on her name (each line contributing a letter), in the March 1848 Union Magazine (see
Mabbott 1: 424-26, for the text and for the reliance of the two Poes upon the largesse of the two Lewis family members; see also note
e below). This review, first published as an unsigned piece in the Democratic Review (August 1848) and later in
Graham’s (April 1849) and the Western Quarterly Review (April 1849), is a sad example of the sort of dishonest
puffery Poe had so often denounced in others — including the fanciful judgment at the end that The Child of the Sea
“will confer immortality on its author.” Unfortunately for his own [page 387:] reputation as a critic, he had to quote directly from her text. Poe’s final service to Lewis
during his life was an attempt to get Griswold to substitute a new headnote on her for the reserved one he printed in The Female
Poets of America (1848). Griswold declined to do so, but he did publish Poe’s new long sketch in Volume 3: 242-49 of his
edition, under the title “Estelle Anna Lewis.”

a in 1840] It appeared in the New York New World of 4 September 1841 (3: 151) which credited it to the Troy Daily
Whig.

babandon] For Poe’s frequent use of this as a special French conception see August 1836 - 3 note d and also
August 1849 - 1 at note b.

eMaria del Occidente] Maria Brooks, Massachusetts author of the poem Zophiel (1825; 1833), was given this sobriquet by Robert
Southey in The Doctor, which Poe had reviewed in July 1836 - 4.

d Elliott] Charles Loring Elliott (properly) (1812-1868) was, early, famed in America for his portraits. The Dictionary
ofAmerican Biography gives a short list of his eminent sitters and tells of his distinctive merits. Mrs. Lewis eventually gave her
portrait to the New-York Historical Society, perhaps to join Poe’s portrait by Samuel Osgood, donated in 1857; see the plate and
illuminating article in Michael Deas, The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe (Charlottesville: UP of Va., 1988), pp.
24-27.

f capability] The words “capacity” and “capability” were then near synonyms, as shown in the OED
(see the epithet “Capability” Brown, referring to the “capability” of landscapes, i.e., their potentiality).

g “Tenel”] This is a clear misprint for “Zenel” in Poe’s text probably consequent upon Mrs.
Lewis’s footnote in Records of the Heart that Poe is using. Perhaps Poe, seeing her transliteration of the Spanish
“z” as “th“, was misled into assuming it as representing a “t“-shaky as was his Spanish, especially
phonically. All evidence shows his very weak grasp of the language. Her transcription, of course, is weak too in giving an
“a” (probably a schwa) to the first “e” and in using “ail” instead of “ell” for the
second syllable, although English cannot quite manage the Spanish “e” sound of that syllable.

h L. E. L.] Letitia E. Landon was later deemed by Poe “one of the sweetest, brightest, loftiest of . . . female
poets” (in a review of her “literary remains” in the August 1841 Graham’s, Harrison 10: 196).

i one farewell tear?] The first stanza, and especially the first line are directly derived, as Mrs. Lewis indicates, from
elsewhere, specifically, Byron’s “Elegiac Stanzas, on the Death of Sir Peter Parker, Bart.”: “There is a tear
for all that die, / A mourner o‘er the humblest grave.” Poe, perhaps deliberately, ignores a more significant and extensive
debt to Motherwell’s “Lines Given to a Friend (a Day or Two before his Decease),” which Griswold prints in his
headnote on Lewis in his anthology (pp. 263-64, nine lines given).

k in his “Alciphron”] Poe greatly admired this work (see Pollin, Dictionary, p. 104 for six loci), and note,
in his review in Burton’s of January 1840 (Harrison 10: 60-71), Poe’s praise for ideas figuring largely in the early
SLM reviews. [page 388:]

February 1849 - 1 Title: Rufus W. Griswold, ed. The Female Poets of
America. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1849 [issued in December 1848]. SLM text: 15: 126-27. Griswold reprinted this
review (with a few omissions) in his edition of the Works, along with Poe’s 1842 notice of The Poets and Poetry of America
in the Boston Miscellany (see Poe Log, 376 ff.), under the title “Mr. Griswold and the Poets” (3: 28392).
Pollin surveys the history of these texts in “The Provenance and Correct Text of Poe’s Review of Griswold’s Female
Poets of America,” Poe Newsletter 2: 35-36. He also lists the changes made by Griswold. In his “Preface”
to “Memoir of the Author,” Griswold printed the text of a letter purportedly sent to him by Poe, which refers to “my
notice of your ‘Female Poets of America,’ in the forthcoming ’Southern Literary Messenger“’ (1: xxii).
This letter is now considered a Griswold forgery. Because of this fact, the Poe Log (pp. 789-90) expresses doubts about the
review and asserts “Other evidence to establish Poe’s authorship seems lacking.” But the other evidence actually is
substantial, including consistency with Poe’s critical judgments, his characteristic habit of italicizing words throughout the
text, and the references to Du Bartas and Maria del Occidente (see notes below). In an authentic letter to Griswold of June 9, Poe also
discusses Female Poets (Letters 2: 45051).

a Previous anthologies by Griswold had always been deprecated by Poe as mere compilations in several earlier reviews and in
Poe’s many lectures through the years on his book The Poets and Poetry of America. Clearly, Griswold, smarting under
Poe’s two harsh notes at the very beginning, in arranging to reprint this review in an article in the September 1850 third volume
of the Works, removed them, printing only “These works” etc. He also removed the parenthesis after Miss Talley:
“The ’Susan’ of our own Messenger” — as identifying the source of the review. Finally, Griswold removed
Poe’s very last sentence with its deprecating opening: “The most glaring omissions . . .” (that is,
by Griswold!). In his sedulous and uncritical transcription from the posthumous [column 2:]Works, Harrison has deprived most students of Poe of a full and proper text for almost 100 years.

b The Prose Authors] Poe meant “Writers” for “Authors” here. Griswold had been zealous to render Poe
“very perfect justice” in this anthology of 1845, both in the size of the article and in correcting any errors in the
headnote in the earlier anthology of American poetry (1842). See the Poe Log, p. 487.

c she ranks already with the best] In thus overestimating Susan Archer Weiss “the praise may not have been
disinterested,” for Poe “hoped to secure money from her uncle for ‘the Stylus.“’ This insight comes from
Kenneth Silverman (Edgar A. Poe, p. 516, note at the top). She certainly was most affable and helpful a few months later during
his long stay in Richmond, perhaps because of this review.

d Du Bartas] Poe had made a similar comment in his review of Southey’s The Doctor; see July 1836 - 4. Pollin
explains the reference in “Du Bartas and Victor Hugo in Poe’s Criticism,” Mississippi Quarterly 33: 45-55.

eMaria del Occidente] see September 1848 - 1.

March 1849 - 1 Title: [James Russell Lowell]. A Fable for Critics. New
York: George P. Putnam, 1848. SLM text: pp. 189-91. (Poe wrongly added “the” before “Critics” in
the title, and repeated this error six times in the body of the review, where it has been retained; see note k 1 below.)
Lowell’s satirical poem, at first published anonymously, contains remarkably deft thumbnail sketches of a number of his literary
contemporaries — including Poe, who, predictably, takes great offense at the characterization of him. His violent attack on Lowell
as “one of the most rabid of the Abolition fanatics” leads to what is his longest and most direct public defense of slavery.
This was an appropriate stance for the author of a review published in the SLM, which increasingly became a champion of the
South’s “peculiar institution,” and there is no reason to doubt that it is a statement of Poe’s own views. The
pro-Southernism that saturates this passage [page 389:] extends into his onslaught
on Lowell’s choice of subjects worthy of praise, whom Poe describes, inaccurately, as Bostonians all. From its earliest issue, the
SLM had promised to support Southern writers; Poe instances Hugh Swinton Legare, William Gilmore Simms, and Augustus Baldwin
Longstreet as among those Southerners whom Lowell has “passed by in contemptuous silence.” Poe was entitled to prejudices so
candidly acknowledged, but they rendered him incapable of passing fair judgment on the Fable. His other chief line of attack is
on Lowell’s prosody. He insists again, as he had in earlier reviews, on correctness in scansion; he is thus forced to assail
certain lines in Lowell’s poem, ignoring the obvious point that Lowell often wrenched meter and rhyme for comic effect.

The first three paragraphs, almost onethird of Poe’s present article, are a close adaptation of his review of
Park Benjamin’s address in the form of a poem, “Infatuation,” which Poe placed into the March 15, 1845 Broadway
Journal (see Pollin 3: 36-37), called “Satirical Poems.” The reader is referred to the annotations for the titles and
authors given in Pollin 4: 36-37, and particularly to the survey-commentary there for Poe’s career-long views on satirists
starting the notes — all as a supplement to those which follow, below. The commentary chiefly concerns Lambert Wilmer, John
Trumbull, and Laughton Osborn as satirists.

a Osborn] See April 1835 - 10.

b Trumbull] John Trumbull (1750-1831) wrote several satires, including M‘Fingal and The Progress of Dulness.

c Halleck] See April 1836 - 3.

d Park Benjamin . . . Holmes] Benjamin, prominent editor, wrote verse popular in his own day; Oliver Wendell Holmes, a
Bostonian, was a well known household poet.

e Channing] William Ellery Channing, whose poetry Poe had savaged in the August 1843 Graham’s. For a full expansion
of Poe’s derision of W. E. Channing, Jr. see Poe’s long article in Graham’s of August 1843 labeled “Our
Amateur Poets, No. III” (see Harrison 11: 174-90).

e 1 It has been suggested that] In the [column 2:] 1845 original text this read: “An ingenious friend at our
elbow. . . ,” undoubtedly Nathaniel Willis, editor of the Evening Mirror, on whose staff Poe had been working up
to February and who knew England and its aristocracy very well.

f McFingal . . . Hudibras] M‘Fingal (1775, 1781) is a satire by John Trumbull in the style of Samuel
Butler’s Hudibras.

g Dunciad] Satirical poem by Alexander Pope.

h Archilochuses] Archilochus was a Greek poet of the seventh century B.C., known for his lampoons in iambics.

i [Greek phrase] Literally, “echoing iambics,” coming from the Anthologia Palatina (9.185) and doubtless seen
by Poe in a secondary source. Archilochus was an early developer of the meter.

j “English . . . Reviewers”] Poe later identifies the poet as Byron.

k “The Legend of Brittany”] This poem had usurped almost the entire space of Poe’s review of Lowell’s
newly collected Poems in the March 1844 Graham’s (see Harrison 11: 243-49). Poe then found only tinges of
Lowell’s “didacticism” and some versification faults, but still Lowell’s poetical genius put him at the very top
of American writers. Is it relevant to point out that in January 1843 Lowell’s Pioneer had published Poe’s
“Tell-Tale Heart” and in March his “Notes upon English Verse“? Moreover, in 1845 Lowell was to promote
Poe’s lecture and reading at the Lyceum in Boston and see printed in the February 1845 Graham’s his long aborning
biography of Poe. All that cordial relationship was now ended, with reflections even in the text of the somewhat altered biography
provided by Lowell for the posthumous edition (1850) of Poe’s Works (perhaps altered at Griswold’s behest).

k 1 fanaticism] Lowell was well known as an abolitionist. See Poe’s footnote below.

k 2 used up] In thus referring to Lowell’s being “abusively criticized” and, by implication, therefore
motivated to write his Fable, Poe reveals the source of his alteration of the correct title — three times in the preceding
paragraph. Byron’s satire was against the critics of the two leading review-magazines, for their handling [page 390:] of his first book of poems. Poe fails to note that Lowell is merely reprehending all the
irresponsible and discouraging critics of the many periodicals of the day. Among the probably two dozen names of writers given are few
if any who ever reviewed or attacked Lowell; far from showing “malevolence,” as Poe claims above, he is witty, buoyant,
lightsome about even his New England friends, whose foibles, as well as strengths, he records, including his own (this
“fable” being “anonymous”).

m Miss Fuller’s head] Margaret Fuller, former editor of the Transcendentalist organ The Dial, reviewer for the New
York Tribune, versatile author and celebrated feminist, had a varying relationship with Poe, who abused her with a squib and a
caricature in the Broadway Journal of 1845 but largely praised her in an August 1846 Godey’s
“Literati” sketch (see Harrison 15: 73-83; Pollin, Women and Literature, 5 [1977]: 47-50). In a February 14,
1849 letter to his friend F. W. Thomas (Letters, p. 427), he repeats this absurd charge of Lowell’s chief motive being
revenge against her for her quoted “remark” about Lowell’s “being disgusting,” and Poe mentions his just
dispatched review. In reality exactly five percent of the Fable concerns Fuller. Regarding Poems on Man (1843) by
Cornelius Mathews — none of the separate items is a sonnet. During the mid-forties, Poe had been a firm supporter of Mathews, as
head of the “Young America” movement.

n commendatory criticism] See note k above and observe Poe’s effort to avoid the charge of personal animus in preference to
the “cause” of recognition for all Southern writers. See especially Poe’s review of Lowell’s Poems in the
March 1844 Graham’s, where Lowell is placed “at the very head of the poets of America.”

o Barnaby Rudge] A raven is a character in Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge; the novel is one of the sources for Poe’s
most famous poem. Poe had extensively reviewed it in Graham’s of February 1842, with specific [column 2:] comment on
its prophetic raven (Harrison 11: 38-64, specifically 63). These lines are the best known comment on Poe by one of his contemporaries.
As for the stress on “metres” — Lowell well knew Poe’s frequent passages on prosody in criticism, based on the
“Notes upon English Verse” which he had published.

p accidentally accurate lines] Surely Poe knew the accepted frequency of feminine endings in humorous verse, many of which are
given in “reprehensible” lines below, as well as acceptable substitution of iambs for anapests in a pattern of the latter.
Since so many editions of Lowell’s Fable lack line-numberings, a reader needing to try out these and other humorous
variations, often via the other member of the distich, may find the consecutive numberings useful, knowing that the total number of
lines is 1806. The numbers are 142, 227, 346, 407, 417, 586, 610, 1487, 1491, 1520, 1671, 1801, 529, 376, 678, 827, 1128.

q From the same runic type-fount] It is amusing that Lowell’s Fable was a source for one of Poe’s celebrated
lines — in “The Bells.” The phrase “Runic rhyme” does not occur in the short version of May 1848, but only
in the longer version “written February 6, 1849” (Mabbott 1: 433), the very time that he had concluded his notice on the
Lowell work, having received it at least early in the year for review. This phrase in the singled-out line of the Fable greatly
enhanced Poe’s “new” poem (lines 10, 96, 100, 106).

August 1849 - 1 Title: Edgar A. Poe. “Frances Sargent Osgood.”
SLM (August 1849:509-15). Osgood and Poe met in New York early in March of 1845 and a romantic relationship soon developed,
which Mabbott (1: 556-57) considered platonic but “the most serious in Poe’s life.” She also visited Poe’s wife
Virginia, who, Osgood later reported, thought that her influence over him had a “restraining and beneficial effect” —
i.e., kept him sober. Their relationship was closest during 184546, and cooled during 1847, with the rise of slanderous comments, both
socially and in print, and the return of Samuel Osgood to the household. A gifted portrait painter, [page 391:] prosperous through his commissions in London, their residence from 1835 to 1842 (before their
relocation to Boston and then to New York), he was a philanderer and an adventurer inconstantly at home. Fanny’s obvious
partiality for Poe, freely expressed in gracious, witty, and fanciful verses, captivated the man bound to the tubercular wife and the
dour aunt-mother-in-law. For their amatory verse exchanges, see Mabbott 1: 616 for lists. For information about this charming woman as
Poe’s friend see Pollin, “Poe and Frances Osgood, as linked through ‘Lenore,‘” Mississippi
Quarterly 46 (1993): 185-197; and studies by Mary DeJong, John E. Reilly, Kenneth Silverman (detailed in note 1); also others in
notes 2 and 3 of the article on “Saroni” below. Six months before dying in May 1850, Osgood wrote an account of their
relationship in a letter to Herrman S. Saroni, editor of Saroni’s Musical Times, which was printed in the issue of December
3, 1849. Griswold presented it in his “Memoir” of Poe (1: Iii-liv) as having been written to himself, in response to his
1850 “query” to her about her views on Poe. (For a full account, see Pollin, “Frances Sargent Osgood and
Saroni’s Musical Times. . .,” Poe Studies 23 [1990]: 27-36.)

As Poe’s terminal footnote acknowledges, this article draws from his previous reviews of Osgood in the
Broadway Journal (December 13, 1845; text in Pollin 3: 328-32) and Godey’s (March 1846). Godey’s
(September 1846) also contains a “Literati” sketch of her. Poe edited his papers in 1848 or 1849 for a collected edition of
his works; he made this “portrait” of Fanny Osgood and her works definitive by substituting it in the projected
“Literati” section of volume 3 (1850, in the Griswold edition) for the basic but much briefer text in Godey’s.
It had been swelled in text by two-thirds (Harrison 15: 94-105, 13: 175-93, or from seventeen to thirty paragraphs).

Two months after the appearance of the SLM tribute — on October 7,1849 — Poe died, under still
baffling circumstances, in Baltimore, the city where John Pendleton Kennedy had first suggested that he write for the Southern
Literary Messenger.

a mother of Invention] Poe wisely omits mentioning the provenance of the proverb, since it appears to be Latin (Mater artium
necessitas) but has early derivatives from Richard Franck (for Northern Memoirs, written 1658; published 1694) or Wycherley
(1672) or Farquhar (1702), q.v. in Burton Stevenson, Home Book of Quotations (10th ed.) or Bartlett’s Familiar
Quotations (1951).

babandonnement] For Poe’s extensive use of the equivalent word “abandon” in poetic criticism see August 1836
- 3, note d.

c Poe repeatedly urged her to gather her works for a comprehensive collected edition, which was partially achieved soon after his
death through the efforts of Griswold, as editor, ironically, himself emotionally partial to Mrs. Osgood. However, he too missed several
fugitive pieces, e.g., a fine protest, that a bill for the property rights of married women, passed in April 1848, failed to provide for
true equality of rights, with implications of abuse, such as she had experienced from Sam Osgood; and some moving lines that begin with
one of Poe’s most renowned lines, quoted as published two months before her death (see Mississippi Quarterly, 46: 193-97).

d Earl Athelwood] According to Edward A. Freeman, Historical Essays (London” Macmillan, 1871), pp. 15-25, in
“The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English History,” this story of Lady Ælfthryth, and subsequently as a
widow of King Eadgar in 965 A. D. married by this ruse to Lord Æthelwold, was derived in the Chronicles of William of
Malmesbury from the “evidence” no longer extant of old ballads. It was related by Macaulay in the Preface to his Lays of
Ancient Rome.

d 1 willingly let die] See December 1835 - 3 e for a Poe variation on this phrase from Milton.

e the indefinite word “grace”] Parts of this very paragraph in earlier reviews and the “Literati” sketch
form a pastiche for “Marginalia 209” to which Poe adds his apparent source, Horace Walpole, but in reality one of the many
bons mots in H. B. Wallace’s novel Stanley; see Pollin 2: 350-51 for a full collation of the item with the [page 392:] separate source text components. See “Marginalia 259” (p. 396) for another
reference to Walpole on “grace” used for a pun.

f Fanny Ellsler (sic)] Poe was very fond of the dance, which he used integrally and often in his creative works and in his
criticism (see Pollin, “Poe and the Dance,” Studies in the American Renaissance 1980, pp. 169-82, especially at notes
9 and 29. He must have seen Fanny Elssler, who toured America 1840-42, or at least the glowing reviews, and therefore substituted her
name for that of “Celeste” whom Osgood called the “spirit of the dance” in her London Wreath of Flowers.
Note Poe’s change of the name to “Ellsler” (as he consistently misspelled it).

g epigrammatism] This Poe coinage is often used for Mrs. Osgood criticism. See January 1837 - 1 note p for an
earlier use.

h espièglerie] This French term for a trick, frolic, or roguishness is repeated from Poe’s prior uses in his Osgood
articles.

i emery] This misspelling for “emery” has been included in prior Osgood articles. His figure derives from the concept
of a reducing agent for polishing, but is scarcely in keeping with a “sharpened point.”

jhyperism] For four more instances of this Poe coinage see Pollin, Creator, p. 28. For the contrasted German
“titles” and Poe’s strange notion about Olympic games statues, derived from publicity [column 2:] about the
Washington Monument, see “Marginalia 15” of November 1844 (Pollin 2: 124-25), borrowed by Poe for this text.

k Wreath of Wild Flowers] This London publication of 1838 offered an “Advertisement” section of extensive excerpts
from the journals listed below, from which Poe even more lengthily quoted in his March 1846 Godey’s review of her 1846 New
York issue of Poems (see Harrison 13: 106-107). In neither article does Poe indicate the source of his texts.

m Poetry of America”] This is in the 1847 or eighth edition of Griswold’s anthology. “The Daughter of
Herodias” was first printed in Graham’s of July 1842, pp. 316-19, two issues after the May issue, Poe’s last as
editor. Very possibly it was among the accepted material left by Poe for the new editor, who proved to be Rufus W. Griswold.

n Mrs. Welby] Poe’s linkage of Osgood with these two writers is his highest tribute, in view of his eulogies of both
“Amelia” Welby, author of many poems in the Louisville Daily Journal and her Poems (6th ed., 1849), and of
Maria Gowen Brooks, called “Maria del Occidente” by her English sponsor Southey; see Poe’s intense admiration
manifested over the years for both in Pollin 2: 207.